Category: Barack Obama

Obama’s Failed Presidency

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“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

A disaster, a catastrophe, a cataclysm:

“I want to make government cool again,” he said.
Obama believed in government, and he was confident that his election would signal that the American people were ready to believe again, too.
As we approach the sixth anniversary of his election, the Obama presidency is in tatters. Obama’s policies, foreign and domestic, are widely seen as failed or failing. His approval rating is near its lowest point. Obama’s base of support is loyal and fierce and shrinking. Much of the country sees him as incompetent or untrustworthy, and government, far from being “cool,” is a joke on good days and a threat on bad ones.

Read the rest by Stephen F. Hayes. The problem is not unique to Obama. He’s just Jimmy Carter with more charisma.

The seldom-recognized fact is, liberalism is a wholly destructive force. People who speak of liberalism’s “successes” generally refuse to acknowledge that liberalism only “succeeds” in destroying things, or by cannibalizing pre-existing assets and spending borrowed money. Take for example, Social Security. It began with a 1% employee “contribution” and a 1% payroll tax. Now the Social Security tax is seven times as much, yet the program is hurtling toward bankruptcy, an endless fiscal nightmare. “Success!”

To what shall we compare liberalism? It’s like the ne’er-do-well son who has become addicted to heroin, and America is the prosperous family home which the liberal junkie is steadily robbing blind. Dad comes home from the office and the junkie son says, “Here, Dad, I bought you some Social Security.” Dad thanks him and then says, “Hey, what happened to my big screen TV?”

The junkie shrugs. Dad’s power tools go missing, then Mom’s jewelry, but the indulgent parents don’t want to admit the problem.

Neither does America want to admit its liberalism problem. Go back and look at the LBJ administration. LBJ promised us a “Great Society,” but all he did was destroy a Pretty Good Society. Whatever was wrong with America in 1963, it certainly wasn’t as bad as the hopeless mess LBJ left it in when Richard Nixon took office in 1969.

Yet even as liberalism destroys America, it creates constituencies dependent on a continuation of this destructive process. Entire states have been bought off by the Democrats: “Outside of a handful of states–California (49/48), New York (50/47), Massachusetts (50/47), Maryland, which benefits from the D.C. boom (56/43) — the numbers are brutal. Even blue states like Minnesota (40/57) and Oregon (44/54) have had it with Obama. And in his last redoubts, California et al., Obama is not much more than breaking even.”

College kids think Obama is awesome, but they’re prone to weird beliefs.

Race riots in St. Louis? There’s your “Hope and Change”!

How do you like it now?

 

Jerry Seinfeld Accidentally Explains The Obama Administration

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by Smitty

Alternate title: “If only Barack Obama had delivered this for his Nobel Prize acceptance. . .” I shared the clip a second time with Mrs. Other Smitty this morning, and I realized that Seinfeld was really explaining how this country could possibly be duped by a no-talent rodeo clown. See if you agree:

Via Instapundit, we have “Obama hasn’t come up with one original idea yet“. Of course not. #OccupyResoluteDesk’s task was not to come up with original ideas; it was to talk about ideas as if they were original.

Past the snark, this is an important result. It invites the question: how can we teach people to pull their heads out of Happy Land long enough to approach politics in a semi-sober manner?

If we can’t, then there is probably no escaping Her Majesty, and further ventures into ineptocracy.

via Breitbart

Steyn Distills Obama To < 10 Characters

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by Smitty

Emphasis original:

The Obama Doctrine – “Don’t do stupid sh*t” – has been rendered in non-PG version as “Don’t do stupid stuff”. But it should be more pithily streamlined yet: Don’t do.

I guess one major value added by the Obama Administration is that we’ve more or less seen an operational test of what a Non-Interventionist/Isolationist/Unplugged foreign policy would look like. While I’m not offering the Full Neo-Con, here’s some truth: if you’re not doing warheads on foreheads, you’d better be offering some kind of leadership, at least. Offering neither is a recipe for the dirty diaper on display.

In defense of Obama, this is the paradox of our 1787 Constitution: it’s relatively silent on the matter. Chiefly because the Atlantic was the Mother of All Moats back then, and neither of the people living in Canada at the time were worrisome.

This might be a cogent criticism of the idea of a Convention of States. If it’s not delivering a framework to provide some kind of foreign policy guidance, some super-National Security Strategy against which candidates can be tested (assuming we ever repent of letting the media pass off no-talent rodeo clowns as competent) then why bother?

Question For An Office Holder

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Spake Bobo:

I think a president should always be saluted when they go against their natural inclinations. His inclination is not to use military force. It’s certainly not to insert American power and American bombs into another Arab country and that’s what we’re going to be doing. But I thought they laid out a four-point strategy that was reasonably clear and it’s pretty ambitious. I guess the question I would ask is he said our goal’s clear — to destroy ISIS. What happens if air strikes don’t do it? What happens if the Iraqi army can’t do it? What if the Free Syrian army can’t take some ground in Syria? If that stuff doesn’t happen and our goal is clear to destroy ISIS, what’s the next step? But I think so far you have to salute him for a pretty clear, pretty straightforward strategy.

By the time the ink dries in the history books, Brooks, looks like Obama shall have destroyed precious little else other than the American health care system.

Violence, Foreign and Domestic

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Americans demand that action be taken to deal with two grave threats, radical Islamic terrorism and NFL running backs:

The N.F.L. remained on the defensive Tuesday as questions mounted over its handling of the domestic abuse case involving one of its star running backs, Ray Rice.
Commissioner Roger Goodell went on national television to address what the N.F.L. knew about a graphic video that showed Rice punching and knocking out his then-fiancée in an elevator. The video was released Monday by TMZ, a celebrity gossip website, prompting the Baltimore Ravens to terminate Rice’s contract and the N.F.L. to suspend him indefinitely.
Goodell said he had not seen the video of Rice knocking out his fiancée.
“We assumed there was a video, we asked for a video, but we were never granted that opportunity,” Goodell told CBS News on Tuesday. “No one in the N.F.L. to my knowledge” had seen the video.
In a statement earlier Tuesday, the league said it had asked law enforcement officials for “any and all information about the incident, including any video that may exist” and “that video was not made available to us, and no one in our office saw it until yesterday.” . . .
Goodell said the N.F.L. had seen the less graphic video published by TMZ soon after the assault in February, video that was taken from a camera in a hallway and showed Rice dragging his fiancée from the elevator.
According to advocates for victims of domestic violence, that video should have been enough to prompt Goodell to suspend Rice for more than two games.
“It didn’t leave a lot to the imagination,” said Kim Gandy, the president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
Gandy, who spoke with Goodell at length before he strengthened the league’s domestic violence policy last month, said she applauded the commissioner’s tougher stance and blamed prosecutors in New Jersey for reducing the charges against Rice.
“It’s a sad commentary on the criminal justice system that there wasn’t stronger action taken,” she said. “I guess celebrity has its privileges.”

Speaking of celebrities with privileges, President Obama is reportedly ready to order U.S. air strikes against the ISIS terrorists in Syria, and then he’ll go back to golfing, we presume. A teenage girl captured by the Islamic thugs described her captivity, which is even worse than being married to an NFL running back:

“They treat us like slaves. We are always ‘given’ to different men. Some arrive straight from Syria,” she says.
Isis has made huge territorial gains across northern Iraq and parts of Syria, capturing thousands of women and children according to an Amnesty International report last month.
“They threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering.”
Mayat says some of the youngest girls have stopped talking because of the abuse and were taken away by their captors. Many of the women have attempted to end their lives.
“Sometimes I feel as though it will never end. And if it did, my life would remain forever scarred by the torture I have suffered the past few weeks,” Mayat says. “Even if I survive, I don’t think I’ll be able to remove this horror from my mind.”

Kim Gandy could not be reached for comment.

 

Obama Is All: “Ha ha, Holland! I Got A 35% Approval Floor, And I’m Not Even Named After A Foreign Country”

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by Smitty

Via Instapundit, the excellent Daniel Hannan, emphasis mine:

Snobbery is not confined to any party or faction, of course. What seems far more common on the Left, though, is the need to find some inert, subjugated, grateful mass to champion. At first, that mass was supposed to be the industrialised proletariat. But, when working people were enfranchised, they often turned out to have troublingly conservative opinions. The needy politicians then turned to immigrants and other minorities. Annoyingly for them, some of these groups were equally unwilling to play the part allotted to them. So Lefties began to cast the net wider, searching for people who could be relied on not to contradict the official line: oppressed colonials, Palestinians, black South Africans. Sadly, these groups, too, refused to be either unconditionally grateful or politically correct.
I sometimes wonder whether political neediness explains the popularity of the animal rights movement: here, finally, is a constituency that can be relied on never to gainsay its self-proclaimed champions. Passive, predictable and in need of protection, animals are the perfect political prop.
As for Hollande, the French saw through him long ago. With 13 per cent approval ratings, he is the most unpopular leader in the history of his country (though, in fairness, there were no opinion polls during Charles X’s reign). Some French people may be toothless, but they’re evidently not mindless. They are on the receiving end of the Euro-correct socialism that is immiserating France, and they know it. Vivent les sans-dents!

The whole snobbery/unpopularity thing is as viral as ebola. Consider the utter disdain with which someone bearing actual charisma and a heart for reform, e.g. Sarah Palin, is met. I don’t see how she could possibly have been less effective than #OccupyResoluteDesk, without, say, getting a carrier battle group sunk somewhere while having her feet done. And yet we’re instructed to ridicule her, meanwhile overlooking the rodeo clown stylings of President “Sorry, I think I left my ISIS strategy in my seersucker suit.”

Thursday, while driving to the airport, I got a call from the NRCC, wanting to loot me for $150-$200 to help “fight the Liberal agenda”. I pressed the speaker for more detail on just exactly what that meant. Is the GOP really going to repeal ObamaCare, or just fanny about until Americans get bored and roll over (an admittedly reasonable strategy).

By the time the huckster had worked the panhandle down to $50 I was all “Seriously. I’m calling Boehner’s bluff. The suspicion is that the GOP is tacitly colluding with the IRS. Get the reform plan out there, and I’ll think about contributing.”

The apparent lack of a GOP wave this November is due to the water being confused as to which direction of flow is not Progressive. Which is why it is heartening to see the likes of Tom Coburn calling for a Convention of States. I sort of waffle on which branch of the Progressive Party is the bigger pack of liars;

  • the overt statists know as Democrats, or
  • the closet statists who make occasional patriotic bleats, the Republicans.

In any case, if you like a candidate, don’t bother giving one red cent to any national campaign committee: these career jackwagons are the problem, not the solution.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner

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“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

There seems to be some confusion about President Obama’s “foreign policy.” At times, it has been alleged that he actually has a policy, but these allegations have never been substantiated. My perception, after watching this administration’s actions for the past five years, is that the “foreign policy” is just one continual ad hoc improvisation.

It’s not a Mozart concerto, it’s bebop jazz. For example:

The White House is struggling to deliver a clear message on the threat posed by radical Islamist group ISIS and what the administration might do to counteract it.
Officials have sowed confusion by giving different statements at different times on the level of danger posed by the Islamic group, whose full name is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Obama’s decision last year to ask Congress for authority to level Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces with air strikes is also haunting the administration as it mulls strikes in Syria against ISIS. There have been no guarantees that similar Congressional approval will be sought this time around.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest was peppered with questions on the issue Monday. Referring to the proposed strikes against the Assad regime last year, Earnest responded, “That was a different situation, right?”
But he said little that was definitive about whether attacks against ISIS in Syria are now being considered. Any such action would represent a major escalation from the current situation, in which the U.S. is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS positions in northwestern Iraq.
Strikes within Syria would not merely represent a significant ramping-up of U.S, military action. They would also risk providing de facto assistance to the Assad regime, even while the United States hopes that government will be deposed.

See? The chattering class is convinced that the Obama administration has a “message” problem, when in fact, it’s a policy problem.

Exactly what the hell is the policy? Today is Tuesday, so the Obama administration’s Tuesday policy is in effect, and the Tuesday policy is whatever the hell they decide it is. There’s no long-term plan, no overarching strategy. For the first four years, the Obama administration’s foreign policy was the same as its domestic policy, i.e., “Whatever It Takes to Get Obama Re-Elected.” Now, it seems, the policy is “Whatever It Takes to Help Harry Reid Keep the Senate Majority.”

What this translates to is rather simple:

  1. Try to avoid obvious disasters.
  2. When obvious disasters happen anyway, try to avoid blame.
  3. If you can’t avoid blame, minimize the disaster, accuse critics of racism and get your media friends to change the subject.

As long as the media are eagerly solicitous to pretend that the Obama presidency has been a spectacular success, this approach can never fail. If radical Islamic terrorists were to take over Cleveland, Ohio, next Thursday, the media would unite their voices in a chorus of praise for the president’s handling of the “Cleveland crisis,” and any Republican who pointed out the obvious truth — that the crisis was actually a direct result of Obama’s failed policies — would be denounced as an irresponsible extremist hatemonger.

The media are judging the Obama administration by the standards of a kiddie soccer league where the score doesn’t matter and every child gets a trophy. As a matter of politics, therefore, Obama is always the winner. But policy failure is still policy failure, no matter how many times you call it “success.” If the media had been this blindly partisan in 1968, LBJ would have cruised to re-election on the strength of his “successful” policy in Vietnam.

 

It’s Almost As Though They Have A Script Sitting In Wait, Or Something

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by Smitty

Larry2 at Instapundit
There seems to be a pattern:

  1. unarmed young black guy is shot,
  2. there is a vast media outcry over the young “honor student’s” death,
  3. family provides photos of the dead guy taken when he was 11 years old, well before he had opted for the ghetto thug look,
  4. it comes out that the “honor student” has been committing felonies,
  5. witnesses say the honor student was beating the hell out of the person who shot him,
  6. Democrat politicians call for the shooter’s conviction, and
  7. prosecutors, fearing rioting, black voters, or what have you, prosecute the shooter anyway.

Have I missed anything?

Probably could add something about #OccupyResoluteDesk inserting himself, sadly, wearily, oh-why-won’t-this-world-listen-to-me-self-righteously.

An interesting nuance is the way Obama gets his emotional vampire on in these cases, while never getting too close to Rev. Jesse or Rev. Al or whichever flag officer the Racism Industrial Complex deploys to whip up the Low Information Voters.

Then you have the logistics of bringing in your Professional Protest Staff.